Quarantine

That title has a lot of ambiguity. Have I been quarantined? Do I need to be quarantined? Possibly both.

Today was a good day, though... I had a lot of dreams last night, and told them to Case when I could. This morning, I opened the lab, an event which tends to be pretty enjoyable because it means I can leave when the sun is still out. One of my coworkers tried to replace a bulb in the blocker, and dropped one of the plastic insulators into the machine. It took three women, an Allen wrench (you know, the little ones that fit inside the screws), a coat hanger, sticky block pads, and a screwdriver before I retrieved it. I got grease on my hands, and got triumphant, since after I fished the insulator out, I installed the bulb and it worked. And I got to go home at one, since business was so slow.

I even cooked today - sure, it was only couscous, but damn, it tasted good, and it felt good to be working in the kitchen again. If only I could have that sort of attitude and motivation more than one day in three months... It's the first time I cooked something with pans and heat and such since I was living alone.

Talking of loneliness brings us back to the subject of quarantine. I could say that I have been almost successfully quarantined from the social life I had back east. I wrote an e-mail to a bunch of friends, asking them to write or call, and only one responded to it - he's the one I talk to through AIM on a regular basis. I really don't talk to many other folks, except my family and my coworkers.

And Case's family? They may be the ones that I need to be quarantined from. Case and I both need to get out of this place, hopefully sooner rather than later. Because of the influence of this family, I've found my temper to be shorter, my frustration much more easily rising to the surface, and part of my faith has been sincerely challenged. I'm not talking so much about religious faith, since I'm agnostic, but rather the faith in the love that I hoped would be inherent between family members. It's all I've ever known, from my own personal experience. People I've encountered - friends, lovers, etc. - have had their own dysfunctions like divorce... but even then, the divide in the family still leaves two separate halves that maintain a strong bond.

But recently the friend I talk to regularly cut off all contact with his dad. I knew those two had been having trouble for a long time, and my friend still has a strong bond with his mother and his step-siblings. And hey, he's still a great guy, a kind person, always ready with a hug and reassurance.
Case's family is worse than I ever realized. Sometimes they work together just fine - but more often they're at each other's throats. Case and his dad really are the sanest two. His sister tends to be bipolar, often motherly but just as often lashing out at people who haven't been troubling; his middle brother has gotten in trouble with the law as well as with the rest of the family, and also tends to break most mechanical things he gets his hands on; and his youngest brother is nineteen, doesn't drive, and has serious possession/materialistic issues. And then there's his mother - she loves me, and always says so, but the rest of the family tends to be disgusted by her, and I can understand why. She is utterly dependent on the other members of the family to help get important things done, and makes excuses when she's called upon it. She's had various addictions all her life - the most recent two are smoking and late-night reality shows.
It's chaos. The lack of respect and love that I've seen has shocked me. And it brought me to the final conclusion, one that made me feel so much older than twenty-two - the dysfunctional family IS the norm, and families like mine, Miles', Nick's mom's, etc. are the exceptions. The people that live here seem to be united more by chance than by DNA... a bunch of short-tempered strangers that happen to live in the same building.

*sigh* This is the one of the few times I've really felt that part of my innocence has truly been lost. With the other issues like death and sex, it feels like the innocence is actually replaced by experience, but this is different. Like I said above, this is more like a challenge of my faith, of something that is part of my core being. And with that piece of my life lost, there's really nothing to fill it with.

I only know that Case and I keep each other sane. We can close the door (or at least keep it only a tad ajar, for ventilation and feline sakes) and not pay attention to the stupid shit that's happening outside. We can escape into World of Warcraft, or the humor of Codemonkeys or Psych, or the mysterious wonders of Star Trek or Dr. Who. When we have children, we're going to raise them in the ideal of family - love, support, order, humor, all the good things that work together to form solid bonds between parents and children.

And when we do those things, we will certainly not be here, in Palmdale. We'll have our own place, our own life, and it will be challenging... but it will be good.

Looking forward,
Grety